1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to number generating devices and, more specifically, to electronic computing devices which generate random numbers appropriate to the playing parameters of various lottery games.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are many situations in which it is desirable to be able to select numbers at random. One major application is the selection of lottery numbers. Different lotteries require varied selection of numbers. Numbers are most commonly selected individually or in pairs (i.e. 3-5-7 or 62-45-72-13); in varied clusters (i.e. three pairs 31-18-14, five pairs 12-11-43-23-54); and with different ranges for each individual number or pair (i.e. 0-9, 01-99). At the present state of the art there are no easy-to-use lightweight devices which can perform this function. Lottery selections made by simply thinking of a number are hardly random since the chooser's prior experiences and prejudices will interfere with randomness. Many of the organizations which run lotteries still use the process of selecting marked balls from a tumbler to obtain randomness. General purpose computers may be programmed with random number generating algorithms for this purpose, however they are heavy, expensive and this operation wastes their computing power.
A number of efforts have been made to provide random number selection systems; however, each has severe shortcomings. T. E. Beam (U.S. Pat. No. 4,586,710) provides a lottery selection device in which numbers are randomly generated. A pair of separate activator buttons 22, 28; a pair of separate number/digit-quantity selector slides 23, 27; and a pair of separate random number displays are provided for two types of lottery games: a plural-random-number selected-without-replacement type game, referred to in the patent as a "Lotto" game, and a single multidigit random number type game, referred to in the patent as a "Pick-it" game.
C. Lawlor (U.S. Pat. No. 3,612,845) provided a computer utilizing random pulse trains. In this circuit, noise signals from a diode and clock pulses from a clock pulse source are fed to input legs of a logic circuit such as an AND gate, causing pulses of various amplitudes to appear in the output of the circuit. Complex threshold circuits are then required to eliminate low level pulses leaving high level random pulses. Only one random output at a time is provided. S. Harrington et. al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,151,404) provided a random digit generator which samples a random pulse output, displays that output, determines a second random number and adds it to the first and displays it. This system is clearly unsuitable for the present purpose because each output is inherently greater than the previous output and, therefore, while the first output is truly random, each succeeding output is not clearly random. T. Newman (U.S. Pat. No. 4,277,064) provided a lottery generating method and apparatus which requires a user to depress one pushbutton for each numeral to be randomly selected, whereas one pushbutton is clearly preferable. Also, each number is chosen independently of all previous choices; however, in most lotteries, no number may be selected twice, hence Newman's apparatus is non-functional for use in conventional lotteries. S. Troy, et. al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,494,197) has an automatic lottery system which utilizes a central processing unit with remote terminals which communicate via dedicated phone line or microwave links, a configuration totally unsuitable for use as a hand-held pocket-sized lottery computer.